


Common Man

by Marlex7



Category: The Walking Dead (TV)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-17
Updated: 2016-05-17
Packaged: 2018-06-09 00:48:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,383
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6882595
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Marlex7/pseuds/Marlex7
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He is someone destined to be forgotten by the world. She is someone destined to be underestimated. Daryl looks back on his life before and after the turn, the good and the bad.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Common Man

**Author's Note:**

> This was written for the Bit Sized Bits of Fix community of LiveJournal. The prompt was: The Walking Dead, Beth Greene/Daryl Dixon, "I am nothing special; just a common man with common thoughts, and I've led a common life. There are no monuments dedicated to me and my name will soon be forgotten. But in one respect I have succeeded as gloriously as anyone who's ever lived: I've loved another with all my heart and soul; and to me, this has always been enough."

Back at the prison, the others made sport of trying to figure out what he did before the turn. He never answered. Not once.

He hadn’t been a cop. Or a farmer. Never was a family man. No, he had been nothing. Less than nothing. Wouldn’t be remembered after he was gone. Nobody to care. He could have died in the woods and it wouldn’t have changed the world for shit.

After the turn, he had his brother. They found others, but he and his brother kept apart, figuring they could take what they needed and move on. But then he lost his brother. He would lose him again for real later, but the first time had been enough to remind him that he was nobody and didn’t deserve anything but the same.

Then something strange happened. The others began to rely on him. Trust him even. He told himself that they were only using him, taking advantage of skills honed through his shit life in order to deal with the shit world they found themselves in.

Fuck them, he thought. They didn’t give a shit when his brother was left behind on some goddamned building. Why should he care about them? Should just leave and go back to the way it was before. Least then he didn’t have to worry about people relying on him to live. He didn’t need that shit.

Then the girl went missing. And something changed, only this time inside him. He didn’t understand it really. Nobody ever cared about him. Not his drunk of a mother. Not his asshole of a father. Not even his brother.

But it didn’t matter. The change was there and it wouldn’t let him go. So he didn’t let go either. But, as he should have known all along, it didn’t matter, ‘cause the girl was dead. Turned and trapped in a barn like fucking cattle.

But for some damn reason, the change stuck anyway. And the others became more than annoyances, more than just assholes marching behind the string of assholes he’d met through his life. They became friends, something he hadn’t had since he was in grade school, before his mother burned herself up and his father turned his fists to him as a replacement.

And then the farm was overrun and they found the prison. Despite the losses they’d just experienced, they gave into the hope that this place would stand. And so he settled into the prison he swore he would never go, despite the dumb shit his brother often talked him into doing.

New people joined them and they lost others. And then the baby came.

He wasn’t sure what drew him to the squawking little thing, but there he was. And so was she. The one who everyone overlooked unless they needed some chore done or a song to be sung.

To the others, she was a delicate piece of china, something his mother would have bought at a yard sale for too much money only for his father to smash it against the wall just to watch her cry. Delicate things didn’t belong in the world he grew up in and they sure as hell didn’t belong in this one.

But she wasn’t china. He watched her take care of the others, somehow knowing what they needed even when they didn’t. He didn’t know it himself until a boy was dead and he was crying and she was holding him, even though it should have been her that needed consoling.

No, she was stronger than any of them gave her credit for.

And then the world invaded their little sanctuary, and people died, others rose, a father lost his head and he was back in the woods. Only this time she was with him.

And he had failed them. Worthless asshole. Only thing worse than him was him thinking he was anything else. He would have just sat there and let the end come. Nobody would remember him either way. Let the fucking world finish the job it had started when he was a kid. Why fucking not?

Her. That was why. She was stronger than they thought, but she still needed help. And so did he, as it turned out.

An evening of booze. A night of fire. A morning of new beginnings.

She opened him up and laid him bare. He answered the question he had always refused to before, telling her of the nobody he was and how the world didn’t give a shit about him and how it would never remember him. And she accepted him.

And he realized she wasn’t just stronger than they gave her credit for, she was the strongest of them all. Because she had looked into the teeth of this world and kept herself, holding onto the kernel of hope that defined her being. Not that she would survive this world, but that the world could be better, would be better.

And while that world might not remember him, he would remember her, she said, and no words seemed more cruel than those. For there was something growing in the emptiness within him after she scooped out his hate and pain.

But he didn’t know what it was, had no experience to give it a name. So later, when a question was asked, he could only stare until she said, “Oh,” and what he would have said next never came because of a damn dog and the dead returning to take it all away.

And she was gone, and fucking hell, did he miss her.

Later, they found her again, in a hospital filled with shit, but there she was, blemished but whole. Until she wasn’t.

And he had to miss her all over again, and this time he didn’t think he would make it. Instead he went back to not caring, went back to the asshole he was, the hate filling in the void left by her loss.

But she wouldn’t give up so easily. And her hold on him was just as strong as she had been. Even if he would never be remembered by this world, he could leave a mark, by proving she was right and there was light in this world, even if its brightest flame was gone.

So he helped the others survive, until they could find a new place once more. And once more they hoped the walls would hold. So he set out to bring others to this place, because that was what she would have done.

They found others. Some were good. Some were not. The world was still the world.

There were better times and worse times, like some goddamned novel, his life strung out ahead of him to a future that would forget he ever existed.

Then one day, the newcomer wasn’t new. Golden hair covering a scar. A slight face marred by several others. But it was her. How? Answers were given and stories were shared.

But he didn’t care about how. Not even why. Just that it was. She was. And he was. Because he had been an asshole. A nobody. Maybe he still was. But maybe he wasn’t. Either way, the world didn’t give a shit about him. Didn’t give a shit about any of them.

But he could now put to words what he couldn’t before. Because he wasn’t going to get a third chance. And she said them back. And that was enough.

He stared out over the wall, looking at the sun about to set. Out there were people. Some were good. Some were not. The world was still the world and some day it would come banging on their walls. Maybe they would hold. Maybe they wouldn’t.

But even if the world never remembered who he was and what he had done, he still had the one thing it couldn’t take from him. He had found love. An asshole like him. And a delicate piece of china that wasn’t. And that was enough.

“Going to sit up here forever?” she asked, standing behind him. “Dinner’s almost ready.”

He stood and faced her, the falling sun setting her hair ablaze. And he thought of another fire. And everything that came before and after.

“Alright,” he said. “Let’s go home.”


End file.
